Congeries of cross connected concepts
In the interest of avoiding any election coverage, here is a story about the ongoing legal battle between the hobby rocketry interests and the BATFE over regulation of AP, the fuel used to make high power rocket motors.
The BATFE insists that AP is an explosive for no apparent reason and the hobby says it’s not, because it isn’t. It reminds me much of a certain weblogger who, once he has made some statement, holds to it despite any counter argument or evidence. In this case, however, the BATFE is required by law to supply some fact based arguments in support of its regulatory decisions and up to now the lawsuits have basically been a demand to do so. BATFE’s initial response was “we don’t care what the law says, we’re the government, we don’t have to explain”. Fortunately the judge disagreed and gave the BATFE until 31 Oct 2006 to come up said explanation. BATFE waited until the very last day and then supplied a 1200 page document dump in paper form because, to quote,
Due to its length, the administrative record is being submitted to the Clerk’s Office in paper form only, and will be available for public viewing in the Clerk’s Office between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday
Oh yes, when my documents get too long, converting them to paper only is definitely the first thing I want to do.
The entire episode is bizarre, as the hobby interests would have been happy to reach some reasonable compromise. The current law is stupid. For instance, I can have as many slugs of AP as I want, as long as each slug is 62.5 grams or less. I can have 5,000 pounds of it in my garage in that form, completely unregulated. But if I put two of those slugs together, it’s a dangerous explosive device that needs special regulation and storage. It’s even better in Illinois because the state doesn’t distinguish between high and low explosives, so that 130 gram slug of AP is legally the same as a stick of dynamite. But not the 5,000 pound pile. That’s the scheme the BATFE is defending via its adherence to the “AP is an explosive” concept.
